Monday 7/06 from 8-3pm

Wow I am finally at the end! Today is the last day and boy was it a tough one. All physical labor and man am I glad it's over! We had to pack 3 large computer labs into two small rooms. I can see now the breadth of duties of a school technician. There are times when they are called on to do almost custodial duties, such as moving scores of heavy tables and desks. It is hard to imagine that anyone really "likes" this part of the job, but it is just that--part of the job.

I am pleased to have had such a good intern experience. The people here are wonderful to work with and a wealth of knowledge as well. While I am glad to to done, I will miss this place. =)

Wednesday 7/01 from 9-3pm

Today was great. I got to get my hands dirty!! First I had to move around some PC's from building to building. I spent the rest of the day tearing down labs for moving in a few weeks.

It may not seem like it, but I enjoy days like today where I get to get my hands on the equipment. There isn't much more to tell....but I sure got a lot of machines unplugged and ready to go. =)

Until tomorrow... ~=)

Tuesday 6/30 from 9-3pm

Today is the last day for most of the schools office staff. Central Office and the staff at the tech school will be here all summer. In making my rounds to the schools there were some last minute crisis that had to be addressed. One principal was very worried and frustrated because she couldn't find her network drives. She said she had logged in normally but I'm not sure that was the case. When I had her restart the log-in screen went automatically to "workstation only". This led me to believe maybe she logged in that way by mistake. Regardless, the restart brought back all her network drives and that day was saved. Now, if I could have only helped her by knowing what drive her curriculum information was on...

As every other day so far I had more OptiPlex 620's to boot up. It was super hot today so everything I did all day seemed to be in slow motion.

Until tomorrow... ~=)

Monday 6/29 from 9-3pm

Today was another slow day. Nick and Richard just returned from their week away last week. They have a lot of catching up to do but most of it is stuff they had to do. I did get a few assignments to keep me busy though. All were Optiplex 620 issues though. Yuck! I see how schools learn what to buy, and what not to, with this situation. It is a common flaw among all these models. Unfortunately, it didn't become apparent until the machines aged a bit. By that time they were out of warranty. In tight budget times you can't just get new PC's though. So....

It took almost 2 hours collectively to get one up and running. I worked on 3 more at the same school also. I left notes to log off rather than shut down for the teachers. I know that if it were me that would be hard. I am very energy conscience and always shut-down. Here I guess having them work is better than saving that little bit of energy. =/

Until tomorrow... ~=)

Thursday 6/18 from 10-3pm

Today was a good day for hands-on experience! First I was called on to fix a printer at the Middle School. They had just taken out a larger printer to which the PC was configured. It was as simple as going in and resetting the default printer to the smaller one beside the machine. YEA! When I restarted the machine however, there was an error message regarding memory. Nick asked me to swap the RAM sticks to see if it helped the issue. While I had been inside a machine before, this was a first for me. Patient Nick talked me through it via speakerphone and was great. The worst part was the dust. MAN do these machines house a lot of dust bunnies! I reassembled the machine, powered up, and all seemed to be well. Off I go....

Next was another Optiplex 620 issue. The same issue as before. This one took a couple of tries but booted successfully. Next I am off to install a scanner!

The scanner was easy to hook up but the chore was the drivers. Luckily Nick was at the tech house and found the drivers and loaded them to a network drive for me to install. There were some issues with speed so Nick remoted in, killed some processes, and sped things up considerably. In the end, the scanner worked and I was done for the day. I really enjoyed all the hands-on work today.

Untill next time.... ~=)

Wednesday 6/17 from 10-3pm

Today was a light day. I made rounds to the schools to see if anyone needed help. There was a few minor questions dealing with browser issues and Word help. I also presented my Wireless Networking lesson to Nick. Although he already knew the content, he seemed to stay attentive. It was strange presenting to an audience of one, but he was the only one available. It was worth it though for the experience alone.

Until tomorrow... ~=)

Tuesday 6/16 from 10-3pm

Today was a light day as far as emergency helps or fixes. I spent the majority of the day re-imaging the community ed room. I followed the same process as I described yesterday. I also spent a little time with a teacher starting up he Optiplex GX620. Just like all the others I have had to work with they have a problem starting up. Basically you have to let it attempt to boot for 5-10 minutes. Then you hold in the power button until it shuts off and IMMEDIATELY press again to start. It usually boots this way but it may take 3-10 tries to get it to do so. =(

Until tomorrow... ~=)

Monday 6/15 from 10-3pm

Today I got to re-image my first lab. It was a treat for me. The district uses Novell ZenWorks to create bootable CD's to clone machines. ZenWorks is server based so rather than imaging each machine from the server, I set up one machine as the "Master" and the rest as "clients". This way only one machine had to draw from the server; the rest draw from the master. Following are the steps I took to do this:

1. boot from CD
2. choose manual imaging
3. run image
4. set to multi-cast and assign the role of Master
5. boot the rest from CD
6. choose manual imaging
7. set to multi-cast and assign the role of client
8. start session from Master
9. check to see all clients are receiving and sit back and wait =)

Now there was one more thing that had to be done. There is a glitch with some machines and Zen that causes it to not reset drive letters as needed. The network drives use the default letters for the four removable drives. That means all four drives on each machine had to be renamed L, M, N, and O. The other issue was with the computer names. They all assumed the name of the Master. I also had to go in on each machine and change the name. Following are the steps I took to do this:

1. right-click on the my-computer icon
2. scroll and click on properties
3. under the "computer name" tab click on "change"
4. set name as desired
5. click ok and ok again
6. choose to restart now or later(name change won't take affect until restart)

This was a time-consuming process but a great learning experience. Tomorrow I get to re-image the community ed. room. YAE!!! Until tomorrow… =)

Thursday 6/11 from 10-3pm

Ok another day another non-dollar. =) When I got here today Nick and I had a great talk about the school's website. It seems that rather that just using basic HTML to create and maintain the site, he prefers to use PHP. This allows for much more in-depth, dynamic pages. It also allows for password or IP protection of certain content on the site. He uses an editor called Crimson Editor rather than notepad. No WYSIWYG used here! He likes Crimson editor especially for its syntax highlighting. You can go into any page and choose the coding language you want highlighted from a drop-down menu and BAM you have color-coded code to search through.

Well the lightening saga is far from being over. Today it seems the effects from the strike are still being felt. There was the blown port yesterday and something today is terribly wrong. The reports would come in waves about every ten -twenty minutes that the network was down. When we checked however there wasn't a problem. Nick and I were in the server room as he "brain-dumped" on me about virtual machines/servers and IP assignments, suddenly all the4 lights went CRAZY and we saw the problem when it happened. It's a funny thing about technology issues; they are very similar to problems with your car. You know the problem exists but when you get it to an expert to take a look it works fine. UGH! I know this frustration from both sides of the fence. Since we were lucky enough to see it when it occurred, Nick's wheels started to turn. He started going through the network looking for the source of the problem. He finally narrowed it down to one computer and a Port 427 error. When we got to the site of the machine he first checked for viruses and ITunes files(Port 427 somehow, sometimes associated with I-Tunes?). As he worked we talked with the computer user about what she had been doing before the problems began, we discovered that she had plugged in a cable she found lying on the floor under her desk. The problem was the cable came from the same switch she plugged it into. OOPS it was a "router loop" as it's called. It was hard for me to imagine, but this one cable plugged in wrong was taking down the entire network every ten minutes or so. We discussed how it was sending out packets every 10-15 minutes to wait for a reply. Each time it would time-out and try again. CRAZY! So it seemed like the lightening but it was human error.

There was also a breaker box in which the magnet was effected by the lightening strike. It was humming very loudly and is scheduled to be replaced.

Well that's it for today. Until next time... =)

Wednesday 6/10 from 10-3pm

OMG I forgot to tell you about the end of my interview yesterday... There was a large lightening strike and the power went off. We sat around the table in the dark just waiting for it to come back on. And it didn't... I left with my notebook shielding my head from the rain and ran to the car and left.

When I returned today, the lightening strike's damage was still being dealt with. It caused sporadic problems throughout the network, but the worst situation was that the back-up server failed for a short time. Or so we thought that was the worst issue....

While Nick has been here two hours already, the first "fix" I get in on is at "Hunt House". This is one of the two houses the district owns and currently is offline. Nick has already replaced the switch and we are back with the Fluke One Touch to run lines and continue to search out the problem. After running all the lines we found one cable with a "flakey" signal. It was not dead, but it's signal was inconsistent or "flakey". So off to the central office to see what's on the other end of this flakey cable… At the other end we find a huge switch with many, many cables. Thank goodness for color-coded cable. On this end we find a blown port. This is most likely another casualty of the lightening strike. Success we fixed the problem!! Well Nick fixed the problem....but I watched and learned.

Here is a great site for speed testing your connection that learned today: speakeasy.net/speedtest
I also learned a new MSDOS commands to get machine and network information: ipconfig/all
Additionally, I learned the uses for ipconfig/release and ipconfig/renew in a network setting.
Plus, I learned how to ping one, or a range of IP addresses. 0% loss indicates IP in use and 100% loss indicates IP open.

Now it was off to see the people. Nick gave me a Zip drive to take and install at central office. This was fairly easy since the lady it was for had left the cables for her last zip drive easily accessible and connected. The next step was new, but Nick had showed me how before I left the tech house. I had to change the drive letter assigned to tghe new zip drive from D: to B: Basically to do this I had to right-click on the My Computer Icon, select manage from the drop-down menu, then choose Disk Management on the left of the next window under storage. To the right of that window you see all your disk drives listed. There is a scroll bar to navigate through them. When you find the one you want to change, right-click and then choose Change Drive And Letter Paths. This was a breeze once I had done it. SWEET!

Next, I was off to the schools to check with summer school staff to see if tghey had any needs. Luckily I found the principal at one school who needed some assistance with Word. Margins were being difficult for her but we worked it out. I was also able to show he how to magnify her work and her browser text by clicking control and rolling up with the scroll bar on the mouse. Once she understood that it wasn't changing the font size, only her display she was happy as a clam! =)

I really enjoyed today and learned quite a lot. Until tomorrow...

Tuesday 6/9 from 2-3pm

Today, I interviewed for a Technician IV position. It was great! I made a list of all my hands-on skills and surprised myself at the list I ended up with. =) Yesterday, when I was first talking with Nick, he asked me what things I had done. As I remembered the different instances from the jobs I've had it was an eye-opener to the skills I posses that make me a great fit for this job.(wishful thinking...not arrogance). I hope they feel the same.

I think I have summed up the duties in these general areas below.

• receive and respond to trouble tickets from users in the district by priority protocol
• install and maintain all technical equipment in the district including internal maintenance of machines, and warranty work
• provide assistance to teachers on a "walk-in" basis

Like I said, I am hopeful but am used to not getting jobs, so no worries. =) The right ones ALWAYS seem to find me. ~=)

Until tomorrow~

Monday 6/8 from 10-3pm

Today was my first day interning at a nearby school. Mr. Wells, my supervising teacher, was in a meeting when I arrived so I was sent to his lead technician, Nick. We had a good conversation as he filled me in on the status of technology needs for summer school. Their network consists of approximately 800 computers and serves 3 schools, two district-owned houses, and administrative buildings. Summer school is in session and they have 2 school buildings, one with 3 classrooms with about 20 computers in each, that they assist with as needed. That will be one of my "duties" is to visit each teacher, and building each day to assist with any technology needs as they arise. There are approx 25 teachers teaching summer school. Fifteen of the teachers use PowerSchool, which is an integral part of the District and our next topic of discussion.

PowerSchool is a student Information system(SIS). During this time of year, not only is Power school used for summer school attendance and grades, it is tasked with the generation of numerous annual, district and state reports. As you can imagine, when you do something "annually" it may be hard to remember from year to year. That's where Nick and his Technology Office staff com in. I have used PowerSchool at this school as a sub to read the daily bulletin, take attendance and lunch counts, but don't know a fraction of what it takes to answer the questions being asked of Nick. In order to do and learn all I can I spent the last 2 hours today, reading the PowerSchool Introduction manual and viewed a tutorial on Live Side Scheduling.

The main points of the Live Side Scheduling are outlined below:

I. Power Scheduler
A. Auto-scheduler Set-Up
B. Copy Master Schedule
C. Creating Courses and Sections
D. Enabling Courses
E. Creating Sections
1. Attendance Info
2. Grading Info
F. Modify Schedule
G. Mass Enroll

II. Auto Walk In Scheduling(AWI)
A. Adding Requests
B. Scheduling Preferences
C. Running AWI

I took in a LOT of information and hope to retain some of it. I hope to be able use some of it to answer questions as they're thrown at me during the next three weeks. Mr. Wells set me up with a folder full of Help Documentation to read each afternoon. This will also give me something to read when I help to re-image the machines in the lab he has me stationed in. =) I am so exited...does that make me a geek?!?!